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While I can't say I hold Nintendo in the same esteem as Sony or MS for gaming hardware, even I can recognize when Nintendo is holding a pair of aces.

The hardware while while not exciting in the same way the PSP2 will be it's still a nice boost over the DS. Just to give a quick comparison:

-DS- 2 screens 256x192 (256k colors) Two ARM processors, an main ARM94E-S at 67 MHz and ARM7TDMI coprocessor at 33 MHz (for sound) 4MB system RAM 0.656MB video RAM Game cartridges up to 512MB (there may be some exceptions)

-3DS- 2 screens one is 400x240 (outputting 800x240 for 3d effect) the other is 340x240 (16.7 million colors) Two Arm11 CPUs at 266Mhz, a Pica200 GPU 64MB system RAM 4MB of video RAM 2048MB game cartridges

Without talking too much about the 3d ability of this device (which I think is brilliant) the raw specs assuming they're accurate are a decent improvement over the DS. The DS is shit, it didn't have nearly enough memory, and had no dedicated gpu. To give you a simple comparison the DS can output max 2048 polygons at once, the 3DS should in theory be able to output over 10,000,000. It's hard to say as I don't have the clock speed for the gpu. I know it's 15 mil at default clock speeds for pica200, but it will be down clocked for 3DS. Also you can expect games to render special effects which will lower effective poly count. Still games won't be nearly as blocky as they are on the old and busted, much nicer textures and colors too.

If it was me though I'd still go with one higher res screen instead of two low res screens, and I feel the 3DS should have at least double the RAM.

So you're drinking the 3D kool-aid? I'm still not a huge fan of the tech because it gives me a headache after a bit. I've pre-ordered a 3DS already, but I see myself using it more with the 3D slider turned all the way down, and really it'll end up like my DSi, unused except for massive hours on a certain RPG that is aimed at kids that I refuse to name.

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